Rrazz company sues Nikko - alleges racism

S.F. COURTS

Updated 9:41 am, Wednesday, December 12, 2012

A drink menu of the cabaret performance venue at the Nikko Hotel called the Rrazz Room in San Francisco.

A drink menu of the cabaret performance venue at the Nikko Hotel called the Rrazz Room in San Francisco.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, SFC

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Kim Nalley gets comfortable with a microphone on stage at the Rrazz Room. Jazz singer Kim Nalley is crazy about the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, Calif. where she sometimes performs and will be the final act on New Year's Eve.

Kim Nalley gets comfortable with a microphone on stage at the Rrazz Room. Jazz singer Kim Nalley is crazy about the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, Calif. where she sometimes performs and will

In this 2008 file photo, Robert Kotolony (left) and Rory Paull (right) manage the cabaret performance venue at the Nikko Hotel called the Rrazz Room.

In this 2008 file photo, Robert Kotolony (left) and Rory Paull (right) manage the cabaret performance venue at the Nikko Hotel called the Rrazz Room.

Photo: Liz Hafalia

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Sally Kellerman was one of the featured singers for the opening night gala of the Rrazz Room in the Nikko Hotel, in San Francisco on March 17, 2008. The 190-seat club, which occupies a lobby-level space formerly used as a meeting room, gave San Francisco a new, centrally located home for cabaret.

Sally Kellerman was one of the featured singers for the opening night gala of the Rrazz Room in the Nikko Hotel, in San Francisco on March 17, 2008. The 190-seat club, which occupies a lobby-level space

Florence Henderson sings at the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, January 5, 2010.

Florence Henderson sings at the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, January 5, 2010.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Rrazz company sues Nikko - alleges racism

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Rrazz Entertainment, the company that runs the Rrazz Room cabaret in San Francisco's Hotel Nikko, has filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court claiming the hotel and its general manager wouldn't extend the club's lease because the shows were bringing too many African Americans into the hotel.

The suit claims that Hotel Nikko (USA), its vice president and manager Anna Marie Presutti and Datam SF, the company that owns the hotel property at Cyril Magnin and O'Farrell streets, breached the contract with Rrazz Entertainment and violated California's Unruh Civil Rights Act.

The plaintiffs, who presented jazz, cabaret and R&B performers since opening the 190-seat club in 2008, are seeking compensatory damages of at least $1 million and triple damages, as well as punitive ones, under the Unruh Civil Rights Act.

The cabaret will close after a New Year's Eve concert by singer Kim Nalley's band.

Rrazz's suit, filed Oct. 31 by the San Francisco law firm Slote and Links, says cabaret owners Robert Kotonly and Rory Paull were denied a five-year lease extension to which their company was entitled.

According to the complaint, Presutti had asked Rrazz to "change its musical programming to reduce the number of rhythm-and-blues acts because defendants did not want the Rrazz Room to attract to the Hotel Nikko a certain 'demographic' that rhythm-and-blues acts were drawing."

The suit adds that Rrazz "understood Ms. Presutti to mean that defendants did not want to attract audiences that were disproportionately African American. Rrazz Entertainment refused to comply with Ms. Presutti's request."

Neither Presutti nor the Rrazz partners were available for comment. A spokeswoman for Hotel Nikko USA said the lawsuit's claims were untrue.

"The decision not to renew the contract with Rrazz Entertainment has nothing to do with race or the type of people attending the shows," said Lucy Siegel of the New York publicity firm Bridge Global Strategies, which represents the hotel. "The hotel has a long history of having diverse entertainment, from classical music to R&B."

The lawsuit also claims that hotel officials were being discriminatory when the Nikko stopped putting on Sunday brunches in its Anzu restaurant featuring DJs from the San Francisco R&B station KBLX who were broadcasting live.

Rrazz Entertainment bought some of the advertising and, according to Rrazz spokesman Dan Fortune, co-produced the shows.

The brunches with KBLX were discontinued last spring because attendance had fallen off, said Siegel, adding that Rrazz played only a "minor" role in the show. "It was simply a matter of economics," she said.

Kotonly and Paull are opening a new club called Live at the Rrazz in January in the AMC movie theater complex at 1000 Van Ness Ave. The Jefferson Starship will play at the first show, Fortune said.

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